


Already Gone

by rangerhitomi



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-14 20:30:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3424568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rangerhitomi/pseuds/rangerhitomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuma is pretty sure his best friend is in this hospital but the nurse is pretty sure he’s not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Already Gone

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the infamous fake summary spoilers for the end of season 5 where the Barians cease to have existed at all.

It’s been a long day and three people had yelled at her and some kid threw up on her and she had a ten minute lunch break and pulling three days in a row of thirteen hour shifts is something she’s never going to do again. She goes around with her clipboard, checking off the last-minute things to do, and comes to a room that should be closed and empty but the door is slightly ajar and there’s a boy sitting next to the empty hospital bed with his head resting on the side of the bed, arm extended and hand clenched as though holding something.

She walks in, pushing the door gently, and approaches him. He’s fast asleep, she sees now, and when she reaches out to shake him awake, he bolts up with a whimper, eyes wide and frantic. When he sees her, his tense shoulders relax, and he looks down at the bed.

“It’s way past visiting hours, honey. Are you lost?” she offers, holding out her hand, and he ignores it. His eyes are furrowed, he looks deep in thought, and he grips at his chest, though there is nothing there but his shirt.

“I must have just gotten the wrong room,” he mutters, and apologizes in the same distracted undertone before hurrying out.

* * *

 

A few days later, she’s back at work, and finds the boy back in the room, sleeping with his hand outstretched, and she sighs as she shakes him awake again.

“There’s no one in this room,” she says, forcing her voice to be level. “And visiting hours are over anyway.”

He looks disappointed, sad, and he slumps his shoulders as he turns to the bed with a little pout. “I thought he was here,” he mutters, half to himself, “but if he’s not here, where else could he be…?”

She wonders briefly why this boy determined that his friend was most likely to be at the hospital but decides not to ask.

* * *

 

His friend had been poisoned recently, she learns, and this is puzzling to her because she doesn’t remember anyone being admitted in the past several weeks that had been poisoned. But the boy –  _Yuma_ , he offers – insists that he had, and launches into a fantastical story of warriors from an alternate universe – or maybe it was a parallel world? another planet? – trying to destroy another world and Earth being caught in the middle of it, and she has to applaud him for his imagination.

But he seems to think it’s all really happening.

* * *

 

Yuma comes back every day for three days, looking more and more desperate, pleading with her to check the records  _one more time_  because  _he has to be here, I can’t find him and he wouldn’t disappear without telling me where he was going_ and she realizes how much this mystery boy means to Yuma and she scours the hospital records for any trace of  _Kamishiro Ryoga_  in the past week and finds nothing.

 _He’s in here all the time_ , Yuma insists, and she has been here for four years and can’t recall a boy by that name, or his twin sister Rio (who Yuma is positive had been in this hospital in a coma for over a year until just a short while ago).

She asks him how long he had known Ryoga, and the answer is  _about six months_. She searches the records for the past six months and still comes up empty.

* * *

 

She finds Yuma crying on a bench in the lobby and goes over to console him, and he’s-

-well, he’s a mess. His face is red and his nose is dripping all over his shirt and his hair is disheveled and he probably hasn’t gotten any sleep all week. 

“I haven’t seen him in over a week,” he whimpers, and he’s holding his D-Gazer with such a powerful grip she’s sure he’s going to snap it in half. “He won’t answer my calls, either. I don’t know what to do. I’m scared, what if something happened to him, what if the Barians-” and  the thought of whoever or  _whatever_ the Barians are doing something to his friend is too much for Yuma to handle and he causes quite a scene in the middle of the lobby.

People are looking over at them disapprovingly, and some are shaking their heads in disbelief at the sight of a teenage boy wailing in the middle of a public area, and she rubs his back gently and whispers  _it’ll be okay honey_  but she’s not sure it will because Yuma is clearly heartbroken over what happened to his friend.

* * *

 

Yuma had told her that Ryoga and his sister had spent a lot of time in the hospital in recent years, but she can’t find anything in the records, so she sets the results page to show records from five years back and-

-there’s a newspaper article accompanying four hospital records.

Her eyes fill with tears as she sees Yuma come in, looking hopeless and scared, because she realizes now that his best friend isn’t in this hospital, and hasn’t been a patient here since he and his family died five years ago.


End file.
